


Shadow Upon These Walls

by Verasteine



Category: Alles was zählt
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verasteine/pseuds/Verasteine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. They got back together, they found a way to make it work, but there's something from Roman's past that haunts them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadow Upon These Walls

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://lefaym.livejournal.com/profile)[**lefaym**](http://lefaym.livejournal.com/) and [](http://eumelia.livejournal.com/profile)[**eumelia**](http://eumelia.livejournal.com/) for looking this over! I can never help wondering how much Marc's timing influenced the tragic result (for him) of losing Roman twice. What if he'd shown up at a different time? Roman asked the question; I tried to answer it.

He's standing by the window again, staring out into the dark streets of Hamburg. Marc finds him there; he'd known full well what he'd find when he'd woken up to an empty bed.

It's not often like this, not at all. Once a month at most, and yet... he knows he's stolen Roman away from a life, and he knows it haunts.

Roman looks over his shoulder, framed by the street lights. "Hey. Didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't." Marc walks over to him, lays his hands on Roman's shoulders. His skin is cool to the touch; clearly, he's been out here a while. "Listening to the silence?"

Roman puts one hand over his, and looks back out the window. "Something like that?"

"Want to tell me what it is you hear?" Marc asks gently. He doesn't want to push, hasn't pushed so far, but even he is human.

"Marc, I--" He hears the hesitance in Roman's voice, hears the confessions he doesn't want to make.

"Talking about it might make it easier."

Roman leans back and sighs. "No, it won't."

Marc wraps an arm around him, pulls him back against his own body as if holding on physically means he can hold on to that quicksilver mind, too.

"It isn't... This isn't like the first time. It's not that simple."

The first time around, when they were first together and the childhood that left its traces so deep was still present in the forefront of Roman's mind instead of being a part of a long ago past. Marc had sat up with him some nights, talking until the early hours of the morning, unpacking the damage, trying to bring out the joy and the spirit that had never broken, although it had hidden. The memory has stopped making him angry, because everything fades over time, and now leaves only the sadness behind. He presses a kiss to Roman's shoulder. "I know."

Roman sighs again, deep and weary. "Marc..."

"It's okay," he says, even though it isn't, really, because on these nights, he wonders what it is he is slowly losing Roman to. When they met up again, Roman was single, but there were, and still are, shadows behind his eyes, of a past relationship, of someone whose name Marc knows, but nothing more. A history private and personal, the one topic that Roman avoids when he's so fond of talking about everything else.

Roman rubs his cheek against their joined hands, an affectionate gesture that pleases Marc more than it should. "It's only regrets."

He can't help worrying at it, worrying at the choice of words and the feeling that underneath the current of Roman's voice there is a world he is denied access to. "Only?"

"Marc, it's not--" Roman turns a little in his arms to be able to look him in the eye. "What do you want me to say?" His anger is there, but tinged with weariness and resignation, as if nothing matters enough to fight about it. "That I have loved and lost, and it mattered? That I can grieve for that?"

It stings that he quotes poetry; Marc was the one to introduce him to the arts. The pain he can see in Roman's expressive eyes stings, too; a fine hurt tinged with the guilt of having provoked this confrontation. "Roman, I--"

"What?"

He has to ask. "Do you wish things were different?"

They're both too mature, too grown up, to wrap anything up in romance; too realistic, also, to come out with automatic, reassuring answers. With a soft shrug, Roman says simply, "I don't know."

Marc knew what he was going to say; it doesn't hurt any less. Roman leaves their bed on nights like these; the regrets and the pain have to be strong to do that. "Do you still love him?"

Roman's eyes are filling up, shining with unshed tears. He's always so easily moved; it makes him the exact opposite of Marc, yet they complement each other well. It's one of those things Marc has always loved about him, the way Roman stands for what he feels.

He doesn't really need to speak. Marc knows the answer. "Deniz," he says, to taste the name on his tongue.

"Yes." The word is barely audible, but in the silence of the night, it's unmissable. "Marc..."

He wants to step away, put distance between them, but he's not sure what the end result will be if he does. He provoked this, he pushed. "He didn't love you," he says, and it sounds vindictive and harsh, and he wants to curse himself.

Roman blinks slowly. "Not enough. He didn't love me enough." The tragedy of that truth hangs between them, and Marc just feels sad.

"I'm sorry," he says, apologising more for his own words than for a past that was not his doing.

"It doesn't change what we have," Roman offers.

"No." Marc smiles wryly. "I guess it doesn't."

Roman brings a hand to his face, runs soft fingers over his skin. "Marc, please, I..." He trails off. "I really do love you."

"I know." Marc buries his doubts, buries the feelings that keep picking at his consciousness every time Roman leaves their bed. Somewhere out there, someone carries a piece of Roman's heart, and Marc wants, has always wanted, it all for himself. Getting back together meant compromise, but just how much of it was compromise, he's beginning to learn over time.

Roman is silent, just looking at him. Marc looks back at him for a long time, committing his features to memory, remembering all the years of absence and the things he'd missed. All the time that they were apart, learning to be someone else, someone better. In the end, none of it had come to anything other than that he'd learnt he wasn't complete without Roman, that he'd given up all he'd needed to be himself by asking too much.

Roman is not the lost young man he was then; Marc is not the determined ice skater he was then. In many ways, their roles feel reversed on this night. "I love you," he says, low and sure, holding Roman's eyes, wanting him to feel it.

"I know," Roman answers, and a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. It's soft and gentle, open and honest the way only Roman can be, and only for him.

They're not alone in this room, not really, but Marc will have to live with the ghost.

\--  
 _finis_.


End file.
